N. IRELAND: IRISH PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE VISITS OMAGH скачать в хорошем качестве

N. IRELAND: IRISH PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE VISITS OMAGH

(16 Aug 1998) English/Nat Irish President Mary McAleese arrived in Omagh on Sunday to visit the friends and family of those injured or killed in yesterday's bomb blast which claimed the lives of 28 people. The Irish president arrived at the Omagh leisure complex just minutes after Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had entered the building. The car bomb was the single most devastating terrorist attack in the last thirty years of Northern Ireland's bloody history, and the finger is being pointed at a dissident republican group opposed to the Good Friday agreement. Mary McAleese saw for herself the extent of the devastation caused by yesterday's bomb that ripped through the busy high street in Omagh. The clean up operation has started in earnest to clear up the debris from the blast that left 28 people dead and injured over 220. Northern Irish police have already set up a task force to hunt down the bombers, who struck on the 29th anniversary of the first deployment of British troops on the streets of Northern Ireland. The President expressed her horror at the bombing which she said occurred in spite of a majority vote for peace and diplomacy and a rejection of violence. SOUNDBITE: (English) "To talk about them, these are...I said just a moment ago on another radio programme that if they are capable of what they accomplished yesterday I think it's important for all of us to understand that they are capable of anything. These are people...there are no markers, try and measure them against standards of human decency, they are off the scale, they are off the Richter scale, and so I don't know what they are capable of. Omagh yesterday gives me some chilling, absolutely terrifying insight into what they are capable of, all I do know is they absolutely have to be stopped, they have to be stopped now, I don't know what they are planning for tomorrow, any more than you do Dennis, but it scares me what they could be planning, and they are planning in the teeth of a country North and South which committed itself to consensus based politics, committed itself to a decent way forward, which said in the referendum just gone past that we were going to try to work together in partnership, to honour each other, to respect each other to find a new decent way of living together, and these people whoever they are, whatever their number yesterday in the most callous and brutal way, they gave us their answer, now I think we have to give them their answer by stopping them. There are people who know who they are and the simplest way of stopping them is for those people to surrender their names to the authorities." SUPER CAPTION: Mary McAleese, Irish President She then went on to visit friends and family of those killed or injured who are gathered inside the town's leisure complex awaiting news of their loved ones from the various hospitals in the area. Earlier the leader of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams visited the scene and said he unreservedly condemned the terrorist bombing and urged people to move on and keep alive their hopes for real peace. In the past Adams has categorically refused to condemn violence by the I-R-A or any other republican group. SOUNDBITE: (English) SUPER CAPTION: Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein. Adams and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator also paid a visit to the leisure complex. No group has yet claimed responsibility though it's thought that a dissident republican group planted the bomb in order to wreck the Good Friday peace agreement that was to end 30 years of sectarian strife in the province. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...